Building on the notion that both earnings surprises and the level of insider trading are noisy signals of future prospects of the firm, this paper empirically investigates joint informativeness of the two signals surrounding earnings announcements. Classification of a large sample of firms in the time period 1977–81 based both on the levels of earnings surprise and insider trading results in a finer partition informationally, compared to using just one signal. Both additive and interactive effects are observed while analysing the security market response during the three trading days centered on the day of earnings announcements. Over a 19‐day postannouncement period, the results are less pronounced. The overall pattern of results implies that each signal may contain information not contained in the other, and/or some of the noise associated with each signal may be interactively resolved at the time of earnings announcements. This inference is robust under many measurement alternatives. Résumé. À partir du principe voulant que les bénéfices imprévus ainsi que l'importance des opérations d'initiés soient des indicateurs manifestes des perspectives futures de l'entreprise, les auteurs procèdent à une étude empirique de la qualité informative conjointe des deux indicateurs dans le cadre des avis de bénéfices. La classification d'un vaste échantillon d'entreprises pendant la période 1977–1981 en fonction à la fois du niveau des bénéfices imprévus et de l'importance des opérations d'initiés permet un découpage plus subtil sur le plan informationnel que l'utilisation d'un indicateur unique. Les auteurs observent les effets tant additifs qu'interactifs de cette classification dans l'analyse de la réponse du marché boursier au cours des trois jours de bourse centrés sur le jour de la communication des avis de bénéfices. Pour la période de 19 jours suivant la période d'avis, les résultats sont moins accusés. Le modèle global des résultats suppose que chaque indicateur peut livrer de l'information que l'autre ne livre pas et qu'une partie de ce que manifeste chaque indicateur peut être résolue de façon interactive au moment de la communication des avis de bénf́ices. Cette induction résiste à l'épreuve de plusieurs techniques de mesure.

The conventional wisdom that nominal wages became less sensitive to the business cycle and more autocorrelated after World War II is reexamined here by considering whether these properties are artifacts of the methods used to construct prewar wage series. A replication based on these methods is more cyclically sensitive and exhibits less autocorrelation than the postwar data. Aggregation using variable instead of fixed employment weights also greatly exaggerates the cyclicality of prewar wages. These biases imply that wages are just as sensitive to the cycle today as 100 years ago, perhaps even more so.

This article reports direct evidence on how technological change is related to changes in wage gaps by schooling, experience, and gender. Wage gaps by schooling increased the most in industries with rising R&D intensity and accelerating growth in the capital‐labor ratio. Estimates of their relationship to high‐tech capital are inconclusive. Contrary to popular notions that technological change harms older workers, wage growth of experienced workers is much greater in R&D‐intensive industries than in industries with little R&D activity. The gender gap narrowed more in industries that most intensively used high‐tech capital in 1979.

This paper estimates the effect of union work rules in the building trades on employment and costs by comparing factor demand elasticities for union and nonunion contractors and subcontractors over micro data from two different types of construction. The results show that the elasticities of substitution between labor and nonlabor inputs and own-price elasticities for nonlabor inputs are about the same for union and nonunion contractors. In contrast, the elasticities of substitution among different skill categories of labor and the own-price elasticities for each category are much lower under unionism.

This paper examines the effect of unions on efficiency by estimating cost function systems over three different sets of construction projects. The results show that union contractors have greater economies of scale. This gives them a cost advantage in large commercial office buildings, but in school and hospital construction, nonunion contractors have lower costs at all output levels. Despite the cost differences, profits for nonunion contractors in school and hospital construction are no higher than those for union contractors because the burden of higher union costs is shifted to buyers.

This paper presents evidence on the effect of unionism on productivity in construction. The linkages are distinct from those studied previously in industrial settings. Apprenticeship training and hiring halls probably raise union productivity, while jurisdictional disputes and restrictive work rules lower it. Using Brown and Medoff's methodology, union productivity, measured by value added per employee, is 44 to 52 percent higher than nonunion. The estimate declines to 17 to 22 percent when estimates of interarea construction price differences are used to deflate value added. Occupational mix differences and, possibly, apprenticeship training account for 15 to 27 percent of this difference.

This paper examines the magnitude of changes in relative wages across industries between 1860 and 1983 and analyzes the macroeconomic determinants of such changes at different intervals during this period. The variance across industries in wage growth was at least four times larger before 1948 than afterward. Except for smaller year-to-year variability in output growth across industries after 1948, the macroeconomic factors examined cannot account for this increased rigidity of relative wages. Increases in average establishment size and improved communication of wage trends are probably partially responsible for the observed increase in relative wage rigidity. No single macroeconomic model was consistent with the year-to-year fluctuations in relative wage rigidity in every historical period examined.

According to unpublished data compiled by BLS, productivity in the construction industry reached a peak in 1968 and, except for a brief and small upturn between 1974 and 1976, has been falling ever since. This paper examines the sources of this productivity decline between 1968 and 1978 by estimating a production function to assign weights to various factors responsible for productivity change and deriving a new price deflator for construction which does not rely on labor or material cost indexes, thus eliminating a systematic bias toward overstating the rate of growth of prices.

T WO recent studies have indicated on any given day about 3% to 4% of all workers do not report to their jobs. The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) has reported absence data for a sample of several hundred establishments since January 1974. The median absence rate for the entire sample was 3.4% in 1974, 3.0% in 1975 and 1976, 2.8% in 1977, and 2.9% in 1978.1 Absence rates vary widely across establishments; in December 1978 they ranged from 0 to 23.0%. Recent changes in the Current Population Survey permit the computation of work time lost to absenteeism with household data. In May 1976 Hedges (1977) reported full time workers missed about 3.5% of scheduled hours for health and personal reasons. It is interesting to note in comparison in the same month (1) less than one-third of 1% of scheduled hours were lost to strikes, and (2) 3.4% of the labor force were out of work because they had lost their previous job. Economists have paid little attention to absenteeism despite the sizable number of man-hours involved and the probable impacts on productivity and income distribution. Most of the previous research on work attendance has been done by applied psychologists, who generally argue, according to a recent survey article by Steers and Rhodes (1978), that job dissatisfaction represents the primary cause of absenteeism.2 Another widely held view is absenteeism results from inadequate managerial concern for the problem. Countless authors of articles in personnel and business journals have argued any firm can control absenteeism by keeping adequate records, establishing guidelines for permissible absences, or rewarding workers who attend regularly. Given efficient markets for entrepreneurial expertise, it is unclear why such measures have not already been taken. The purpose of this paper is to suggest an alternate interpretation of absenteeism and to develop an empirical model to test various hypotheses about its incidence. Absences result when an individual decides to engage in nonwork activity throughout a scheduled work period. It will be argued below utility increments obtained by not reporting are likely to vary across individuals and the cost of absenteeism will not be identical across employers. Employers can reduce absenteeism in three ways. One option is to make it more costly to employees, e.g., through decisions regarding promotions, merit wage increases, dismissals, and the availability of sick leave and attendance bonuses. Another is to reduce the worker's demand for absences by making schedules more flexible. In cases where substitute workers are available at no extra cost, absenteeism is costly only when it is unexpected. Both the firm and the worker will then be better off if they agree to adjust the worker's schedule in advance. A final